/m/jhonny_peralta

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

The owner of the South Florida anti-aging clinic at the center of baseball’s latest doping scandal asked embattled Yankee star Alex Rodriguez for financial help after Major League Baseball filed a lawsuit that alleged he had sold performance-enhancing drugs to Major League Baseball players.

When Rodriguez rebuffed Anthony Bosch’s request for money, believed to be in the hundreds of thousands, the self-styled “biochemist” turned to a strange bedfellow — MLB.

“A-Rod refused to pay him what he wanted,” said a source. “Baseball was worried about that.”

MLB reached an agreement this week for Bosch’s cooperation in its long-running investigation into one of the biggest drug scandals in baseball history and plans to meet with him on Friday.

The value of any information that Bosch might provide, however, is sure to be challenged by the implicated players, since baseball officials have agreed to a series of demands from Bosch that include dropping the lawsuit MLB filed against him earlier this year and paying his legal bills, indemnifying him for any civil liability that arises from his cooperation and providing him with personal security.

In one of his first seasons with the Yankees, Rodriguez's neediness became so awkward around the team -- he insisted a clubhouse kid be deployed as his personal dresser, laying out his uniform and undergarments each day as would be done for a king -- that one of the Yankees was in near tears when he went to a club official to ask that Rodriguez be traded.

Rodriguez's neediness became so awkward around the team -- he insisted a clubhouse kid be deployed as his personal dresser, laying out his uniform and undergarments each day as would be done for a king --

WTF.

that one of the Yankees was in near tears when he went to a club official to ask that Rodriguez be traded.

Unlike Bonds, Rodriguez has never played under suspicion that his performance was enhanced by drugs, and he is not expected to be named as part of the Mitchell Report.

Moreover, the Yankees are negotiating approximately $25 million in bonus money for Rodriguez to reflect the additional revenue he will generate if—or when—he chases and breaks Bonds's record. Let the anticipation (and the home run countdown) officially begin. As The United States of America v. Barry Lamar Bonds became a reality, so too did baseball officials' hopes for a new face of the game. In A-Rod they trust.

The never ending weirdness continues. As to having his clothes set up for him, er, what is so weird about that? I've heard of many rich people doing that, or parents doing it for their little kids. Hardly something worth getting into knots over, let alone to be teary eyed over. Just weird.

speaking of home runs, milestone accomplishments less than expected, it's a recession -
ARod to 660 in the next few weeks - doubtful and probably not next year either, if ever
Pujols to 500 - next year maybe

As to having his clothes set up for him, er, what is so weird about that? I've heard of many rich people doing that, or parents doing it for their little kids. Hardly something worth getting into knots over, let alone to be teary eyed over. Just weird.

Have you any idea how hard it is to find a clubhouse attendant who's also a farrier?

Good catch, JJ1986. "Rodriguez and his sycophants" indeed. When does Verducci write his tearful memoir about how he went from sycophant to anti-sycophant?

I predict that in 2015 A-Rod will hit 55 home runs, and everyone will damn A-Rod for being so sneaky as to get this one-year suspension so that he could get back into tip-top shape without the daily grind of playing baseball every day.

Rodriguez's neediness became so awkward around the team -- he insisted a clubhouse kid be deployed as his personal dresser, laying out his uniform and undergarments each day as would be done for a king --

you know, at the time, back when everyone assumed that AROD was gonna be a Met, and all that talk ended when FA discussions with the Mets were torpedoed when Phillips publicly complained about AROD's allegedly selfish and unheard of requests...

at the time Mets fans just assumed that the Wilpons didn't want to spend the money it would have taken to land AROD and had instructed Phillips to blow up the talks and try to blame AROD.

The Wilpons are the Wilpons and Phillips is and was a complete tool, but it is possible that in this instance Phillips did begin talks in "good faith" with AROD and his agents, and every WTF warning bell just started blaring

A king doesn't have his clothes laid out for him to pit on. A king stands there while his clothes are carefully slid onto his body. It's like Verducci hasn't even watched the opening scene of Dangerous Liaisons.

you know, at the time, back when everyone assumed that AROD was gonna be a Met, and all that talk ended when FA discussions with the Mets were torpedoed when Phillips publicly complained about AROD's allegedly selfish and unheard of requests...

This brings to mind LeBron James's unheard-of requests when he was leaving the Cavs and wanted similar Valmont-esque perks from his new team. These were deemed acceptable bargaining chips by the media, after all there was a maximum salary above which he couldn't be paid more even if he was worth it, so it made sense to ask for non-monetary benefits as well. Maybe if baseball had a salary cap A-Rod would not seem so ridiculous for asking for unique star treatment.

#13:Tom Verducci:
Unlike Bonds, Rodriguez has never played under suspicion that his performance was enhanced by drugs, and he is not expected to be named as part of the Mitchell Report.

Moreover, the Yankees are negotiating approximately $25 million in bonus money for Rodriguez to reflect the additional revenue he will generate if—or when—he chases and breaks Bonds's record. Let the anticipation (and the home run countdown) officially begin. As The United States of America v. Barry Lamar Bonds became a reality, so too did baseball officials' hopes for a new face of the game. In A-Rod they trust.

"In 2002, after one of Rodriguez's teammates, Ken Caminiti, detailed to me about the prevalent scandal of steroid use in baseball, I visited Rodriguez at his hotel room after a game in Chicago...

I asked Rodriguez about steroids, the worst kept secret in baseball. He looked at me with wonder. Steroids? What do they do? Why would players take them? It was chilling to listen to his feigned ignorance. He had played in two especially dirty clubhouses in Seattle and Texas and by 2002 steroids were an open secret in the game, and yet here was Rodriguez asking me questions about steroids. Of course, by his later admission, at the time he was loaded to the gills on Primobolan, a steroid favored by bodybuilders that can be taken orally or by injections.

His years in Texas, all of them dirty, made for the worst investment in baseball history. Rangers owner Tom Hicks paid him $150 million for three years (including $71 million to just go away) in which the Rangers finished in last place every year and Rodriguez didn't play a day clean."

Lies and suspicion: so chilling in 2002, so nonexistent in 2007, such a betrayal in 2013.

One wonders what the next chapter of this saga will be. If A-Rod gets to play while appealing, and hits up a storm, then what? 13 HR from a milestone - imagine if the appeal could be stretched out enough for him to reach 660. Now that would be funny to watch as the Yankees pay out the cash then say goodbye for a year. I wonder, after 2014, if the Yankees would trade him while eating whatever is left of his salary? Who would take him? Who here would want him on their team? As a Jays fan I'd take him (at $1-2 mil a year) to play 3B and shift Lawrie to 2B just for the fun of seeing if he could do enough to embarrass the Yankees - hey, if our team has to always be second-rate at least let it be fun.

It wasn’t so much the popular comparison among the AL shortstops — Jeter, Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada and Nomar Garciaparra — in which people (including Rodriguez himself) degraded Jeter for his relative lack of power, his price for playing the game clean. It was that Jeter knew the two of them were wired so differently, with Rodriguez choosing the deceit of steroids to play the game.

"his price for playing the game clean."
Those magic pills must work really well. Just wonder why the other people on the suspended list aren't on pace for 50 or 60 homers. I guess Alex just got used to them since they worked magic before.

I said it in the other thread. This is all good news for the White Sox. Their walk-up crowd will be huge tonight, and they'll probably get a lot of viewers for their RSN. It's too bad that ESPN's Monday Night Baseball game is locked in already; they might break records if they could do the Yankee game.

(*) Finally, after all these years and all the anti-anti-steroid bluster, the correct term. It's as if America, revved up by propaganda, is voting A-Rod off its island because ... well, just because.

Yeah. I'm torn because my initial instinct is indeed to take a measure of pleasure in his public humiliation. But upon second thought I agree with you that the ritual shaming aspect of this is more than a little barbaric, even if I think he's guilty and ought to serve out his full suspension (and I want to see the evidence MLB has before confidently pronouncing A-Rod to be deserving of the FULL suspension).

Honestly, I have never really hated A-Rod. His purported "phoniness" is one of those qualities that I take to be both absolutely true (in the sense that it's not just a media-created myth) and also eminently understandable and sympathetic: the idea that even the supposed 'best player ever' can suffer from an overweening desire to be loved and wracked with self-doubt always seemed to me to be a rather human quality. Now if I had to interact with someone like that on a day-to-day basis as part of a tightly-knit team, would it get to me? Quite possibly. But from afar, A-Rod never seemed like a monster or a weirdo, just a deeply awkward person to whom anyone who has ever felt deeply awkward themselves should be able to relate.

Is it even worth it for a team not likely to make the playoffs¹ to make their franchise into a month-long circus over this? Hopefully the Yanks have given up on the idea of getting his contract voided, so they're not going to have to argue in front of a judge about whether they were refusing to play him when healthy. Other than that factor, why turn your minor-league problem into a major-league problem?

¹ Although, admittedly, not out of the race either, and not with any other good 3B alternatives.

A-Rod never seemed like a monster or a weirdo, just a deeply awkward person to whom anyone who has ever felt deeply awkward themselves should be able to relate.

Ehhh... I'm pretty awkward (ask Blastin), but I think A-Rod pretty clearly comes off as a weirdo. But, while that probably made it hard to relate to his teammates (esp. vets who were grounded in the rules of the game or whatever it is), I can't really understand why you'd dislike the guy.

I once read a description of A-Rod's place in the post-dynasty Torre clubhouse as "Crazy Uncle Alex" and that always seemed apt to me. An honest question: has there ever been a description of Jeter's clubhouse presence beyond the way writers feel about him? Do we have any real idea of what other players think of him? If players think of him the way writers do (the way they apparently feel about Rivera), I could see how A-Rod would feel even more isolated.

"Alex may end up calling attention to himself, but he's not loud about it," Mussina said. "Alex has this motivation to be the best player in the game. When all is said and done, he wants to be the best player ever. That's his motivation in this. That's fine. That's good. Everybody needs a motivation, whatever it is."

and verducci's interpretation was:
"Rodriguez? What drove him was selfishness. "

because obviously just being the best player in the game doesn't help your team at all...

Yeah. I'm torn because my initial instinct is indeed to take a measure of pleasure in his public humiliation. But upon second thought I agree with you that the ritual shaming aspect of this is more than a little barbaric, even if I think he's guilty and ought to serve out his full suspension (and I want to see the evidence MLB has before confidently pronouncing A-Rod to be deserving of the FULL suspension).

The masses have been riled up against a lone individual by several influential large corporate entities -- MLB, the New York Yankees, and numerous media conglomerates -- at least two of which are acting out of pure financial self-interest. The corporate propaganda has been relentless, for weeks, with virtually no pushback from any source. A-Rod has said literally nothing controversial the whole time, and has barely defended himself, and every time he does, the propaganda machine revs up harder and screams louder.

If Arod gets off with 50 after all of this is over, does braun feel like a chump?

Over 12 games? Braun took his hit and the news cycle moved on pretty quickly. ARod has had to deal with this since the Braun suspension story broke.* Perhaps if ARod gets nothing then Braun might feel like a chump.

*Well, he's been dealing with it longer than that but that is when it kicked into overdrive.

If Arod gets off with 50 after all of this is over, does braun feel like a chump?

Probably not because of his salary escalator next year, right? It seemed like he'd rather take the certain suspension this year rather than appeal and risk having to take it next even if the suspension ended up smaller. Of course if A-Rod gets off, then all of them will feel like morons but that's an extreme case, right?

IF Rod gets suspended for 2014 without pay
and IF the Yankees get that money back (or at least don't have to spend it on Rod)
would it help them in their mythical and epic quest to get under a certain salary number in 2014?

I'm hoping ARod beats Bud so that we can then have the public address from ARod in which he saunters up to the podium and announces "I. . . . am. . . . invicible" and the bites his lip, gives a thumbs up, and then saunters away.

I'm with McCoy.... 211 games just seems so arbitrary -- almost as if it was some way to go after A-Rod specifically.... or - maybe it's because the others all just took the suspension and A-Rod refuses/refused to do so.

Neither of these things are likely to hold up when the appeal (which an independent arbiter, not MLB decides, right?) gets heard.

MLB/Selig just seem really stupid for going this route... but whatever.

Who's starting for the Sox tonight? And will the South Side crowd root for a plunking in A-Rod's first at-bat?

What I'm really interested in seeing, though, is the reaction when A-Rod returns to Yankee Stadium. For sheer surrealism, the atmosphere in the Bronx that night might rival the evening Steinbrenner was suspended in 1990 -- when the news was announced over the radio immediately after a Cecil Fielder home run (when he was with the visiting Tigers) and the place went wild. However, in A-Rod's case, the boos in his first home at-bat might last for several minutes...pure hate, as in Steve Allen's short story about how a man was executed at the Stadium through the mental power of mass hatred.

if there's someone else who has a self-centaur painting, Anthony Weiner seems like a pretty likely candidate.

His is a self-centaur molesting an underage girl.

If Arod gets off with 50 after all of this is over, does braun feel like a chump?

Because he was just dying to play in Milwaukee's last meaningless 12 games?

I can't stand Alex Rodriguez, but this very public and gleeful witch hunt (*) is very troubling -- dare I say, a peek into America's future.

The thing about 'witch hunts' are there aren't any actual witches. So, you know, not good. ARod is as dirty as they come and has been for years. Not quite the same thing. Trying super hard to find a guilty man guilty isn't really a bad thing.

211 is weird. What was MLB thinking really? 200 or 250 are defensible ... and by the time the appeal comes, the arbitrator possibly reduces it some, etc. you end up with pretty much the same punishment but you don't make it obvious you made a number up out of thin air because it happened to add up to this season and next.

Arbitrator: OK, I add it up and I get 210 games.
MLB: Plus one game because he wouldn't kiss Bud's ring.

If Arod gets off with 50 after all of this is over, does braun feel like a chump?

No, because Braun was a bit gimpy anyway, the "extra" 15 games was time he was likely gonna miss anyway, plus from Braun's POV the whole drawn out AROD thing has been a positive since the MSM has stopped paying attention to Braun, the MSM explosion if AROD's suspension is reduced to 50 games, will further move the MSM's focus of outrage away from Braun, hell some may even write articles about how at least Braun manned up and accepted his penalty or some BS like that

What's the argument that he gets nothing? Just purely that the evidence when all is said and done won't support even a use/possession charge?

Without knowing what MLB has, if all MLB actually has is the word of Bosch and a Bosch employee or two, and the arbitrator finds them to be wholly unbelievable.

I don't know what MLB has on AROD, I tend to assume AROD was using, but I also assumed that Clemens was using and was actually dumbfounded at how little real evidence the Feds had on Clemens when they tried him.

Edit: My guess at this point is there is a good chance the arbitrator reduces ARod's suspension to 50 games, which will cause all sorts of MSM frothing and wailing.